Stockman On America's Fiscal Sundown, Part 1

The Senate Finance Committee tax bill is not supply side and it's not even a tax cut; it's a gimmick-ridden policy mongrel that smells to high heaven of political desperation and cynicism.

Contrary to the Donald's delusional promise that the American people will get some tax cut sugar plums for Christmas, we are reasonably confident that this misbegotten exercise in reverse-robin hood economics won't reach his desk. But whether it passes in some diluted form or not, we are entirely sure that what the American people are actually getting is a giant lump of fiscal coal----courtesy of the craven capitulation of McConnell & Co to the K-Street lobbies and Wall Street.

And we do mean craven in the very fullest sense of beltway mendacity. Come to think of it, we have witnessed few exercises in raw partisan brinksmanship that were as meretricious and fiscally irresponsible as the current GOP campaign to pass a tax bill---any tax bill--- merely for the sake of posting a legislative victory.

And that assessment comes after scrolling all the way back to 1970, when your editor got a $50 loan from his mother in order to buy an airline ticket from Boston (where we were hiding out from the Vietnam War at Harvard Divinity School) to Washington DC (to interview for a job on Capitol Hill). As it happened, we got the job, paid back the loan and have since then witnessed 47 years of Warfare State and Welfare State aggrandizement up close and personal.

But what is now happening in the Imperial City is a true turning point for the worst. The last vestige of fiscal rectitude is now being deep-sixed by the GOP's vestigial budget hawks in the name of pure partisan advantage.

To be sure, the partisan juggernaut that resulted in Obamacare in 2010 was every bit as craven and fiscally deleterious. It accommodated every element of the nation's bloated health care cartels---hospitals, doctors, pharma, HMOs and insurance companies----with sweetheart reimbursement schemes in return for their acquiescence to the bill's passage and the fulfillment of what had been a 60-year Dem quest for quasi-socialized health care.

Yet at least the Democrats did attempt to finance the trillions in new tax credits and Medicaid costs generated by ObamaCare with some revenue raisers such as the medical device and insurance company taxes and the added levies on upper income earners and investment returns.

Back in the day, in fact, this kind of "tax and spend" welfare statism is exactly what the Democrats stood for. And it was also the party's political Achilles Heel because it enabled the GOP to periodically arouse the electorate on the dangers of "big government" and thereby obtain a resurgence in Washington's corridors of political power.

But after the break from the old-time fiscal religion of balanced budgets during the so-called Reagan Revolution in 1981, the GOP has slowly morphed into the "borrow and spend" party.

Indeed, as the historically ordained party of fiscal rectitude, the GOP's apostasy has enabled two-party complicity in a mindless regime of fiscal kick-the-can since the turn of the century. That lapse, in turn, acutely aggravated an already perilous fiscal equation owing to the baby boom retirement wave and the Fed induced slowdown in the trend rate of economic growth (see below).

In this context, it should be noted that the Senate bill is a farce insofar as it claims to be a middle class tax cut and growth stimulant---since it actually accomplishes neither.

On a honestly reckoned basis (counting debt service and eliminating budget gimmicks), however, it would add $2.2 trillion of new debt over the next decade on top of the $12 trillionalready built-in under current policy. Accordingly, the Senate version of Trumpite "tax reform" would accelerate the public debt toward $35 trillion by 2027 or 140% of GDP.

Yet all of this added red ink would be "wasted" on cuts for 150 million individual taxpayers that are written in disappearing ink (i.e. they lapse after 2025) and on misbegotten corporate rate cuts that will do virtually nothing for economic growth. Indeed, contrary to the old Washington saw about "wasting a good crisis" the Senate bill involves something more like creating a good crisis and wasting it, too.

In the first place, you don't really even need a tax table to see that the overwhelming share of individual taxpayers get shafted----aside from 4.2 million very wealthy filers who would benefit from the alternative minimum tax repeal and a few ten thousand high income business owners who will get a 17%deduction for eligible business income ( a version of the House's pass-thru rate of 25%).

By 2025 the combined cut from these two provisions amounts to $155 billion per year; and despite sun-setting the following year in keeping with the general fiscal scam of the Senate bill, it's unequivocally big bucks of tax relief for households at the tippy-top of the economic ladder while it lasts.

By contrast, there are no net goodiesat all even while the provisions do last for the remaining 145 million individual filers. (All individual tax provisions expire at the end of 2025 in order to propagate the myth that the bill does not add to the long-term deficit and thereby complies with the so-called Byrd Rule for reconciliation and the 51-vote majority).

In fact, the overall deal is a crap shoot. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, when fully effective in 2025, the Senate bill will lower rates in the seven brackets by $165 billionper year and provide further relief of $102 billion owing to doubling the standard deduction (to $25,000 for joint returns) and $78 billion for doubling the child credit to $2,000 per eligible dependent. So that's $345 billionper year of "cuts".

At the same time, repeal of the existing $4,050 personal exemption, complete repeal of the SALT deduction and other loophole closers would raise tax collections by $355 billionin 2025. In a word, aggregate households other than business owners and alternative minimum tax payers, come out $10 billion in the hole---and that's in the best year (2025) before it all expires!

Surely, this is the farce of the century; after the estimated 350 amendments slated for consideration on the Senate floor, it will undoubtedly be subject to the full measure of the ridicule and legislative scorn and redo it deserves.

By the same token, the $1.4 trillion ten-year cost of cutting the corporate rate to 20% and eliminating the corporate minimum tax is permanent. That is the source of all the Wall Street excitement about the bill, but also the reason why the GOP claims that it will stimulate a tsunami of economic growth are so completely groundless.

In a word, the corporate tax is paid by shareholders, not workers; America's big businesses have located production and jobs off-shore (as opposed to merely their tax books and small HQ operations) to access cheaper labor costs and to be nearer to supply chains and end markets, not due to the 35% statutory rate (which few US-based internationals pay); and owing to decades of central bank financial repression and the falsification of financial asset prices, debt and equity capital has never been cheaper.

Accordingly, the $1.4 trillioncorporate rate cut will not go into more jobs, more domestic investment or higher wages; it will overwhelmingly be returned to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks, higher dividends and leveraged recaps. That is, it will go to the 1% and the 10% who own most of the publicly traded equities in the US.

We will examine the GOP's phony "growth" and "dynamic scoring" story in greater depth in part 2. But the larger point here is straight forward: Why try to fool the middle class with a temporary tax cut?

That is, an unsustainable budgetary maneuver that is hostage to a growing fiscal crisis. Yet the GOP is wholly unwilling to confront the latter by reeling in a runaway Warfare State and $3 trillion per year of entitlements and other mandatory spending programs.

Neither of these actions would be justifiable under even ordinary circumstances. But in light of the double whammy of the aging baby boom and faltering economic growth induced by monetary central planning, these measures are especially egregious.

As we frequently point out, real final sales are a far better measure of economic growth than GDP because this metric excludes inventory fluctuations, which can distort the data at key turning points in the business cycle.

Moreover, it is self-evident that the business cycle has not been abolished by the Fed or anyone else. What counts, therefore, is the sustained growth rate over longer time frames during which the business cycle boom and bust periods are averaged together.

On that basis, the U.S. economy has hit the skids very badly---with the trend growth of final sales now at just one-third of its historic average.

Here's a news flash for the GOP. The above 36-year trend of stark deterioration in U.S. economic growth didn't happen because Federal taxes were rising relative to their historic moorings. As a matter of fact, Ronald Reagan inherited a budget with taxes at about 20% of GDP and under current law for FY 2018, the Federal tax take will amount to just 17.7%.

In Part 2 we will discuss the actual anti-growth skunk in the woodpile---which is the Bubble Finance policies of the Fed and the manner in which they have turned the C-suites of corporate American into anti-growth financial engineering operations. But for the moment the idea that the 1.2% real growth trend,which has been in place over the past decade, can somehow be tripled as claimed by White House needs to be recognized for what it is: pie-in-the-sky arm-waving that can't possibly result from the above described Senate tax bill.

Indeed, what the GOP is failing to reckon with in its misplaced confidence that the U.S. growth machine can be revved up at the wave of a tax plan is a hard stop economic reality lurking just around the corner. Namely, that we are now in a late stage business cycle expansion that is due for a recession.

Thus, when the Donald recently enthused that "I happen to be one that thinks we can go much higher than three percent. There's no reason why we shouldn’t. (Applause.)", we are quite sure that no one has ever shown him the chart below.

To wit, to have even a prayer of 3.0% real GDP growth over the next decade---to say nothing of "much higher" levels---the U.S. economy would have to go 207 monthswithout a cyclical downturn. That's never happened in recorded history; it's 2Xthe longest expansion on record and nearly 3Xthe average expansion since 1950.

The best way to visualize that crucial point about the cyclically adjusted long-term growth rate---that is, averaging the boom and bust years together---is via the contrafactual. The blue line in the graph below projects nominal GDP through 2027 based on the actual growth rate over 2006-2016---a period which averages in a full cycle of boom, bust and recovery.

By the terminal year for current budgeting purposes (2027), nominal GDP---which is what actually drives the Federal revenues and the deficit---would clock in at about $25.7 trillion. Thatcompares to $19 trillionat present and amounts to a cut-and-paste replication of the last decade.

By contrast, if you were to overlay upon this actual 10-year trend a real GDP growth rate of 3.0% , which the White House and many Capitol Hill Republicans suggest is a "no sweat" proposition, you get the gray line. That's the annual sum of the 2% inflation rate, which the Fed is bound and determine to achieve one way or another, and the 3.0% real growth predicate.

The bottom line is $30 trillion of extra GDP over the coming decade or nearly 23% more than would be generated by the actual growth rate (blue line) during the last decade.

(Note: the data in the box is unfortunately upside down. The 2006-2016 actual trend should be on the top line and the Trump forecast on the bottom).

Needless to say, there is no set of imaginable tax policies that can generate $30 trillionmore of cumulative GDP over the next decade than would occur based on the actual expansion of the last decade. Moreover, that is especially not going to happen in the face of monetary policy normalization at the Fed and other central banks around the world, and even more especially not after the house of cards in the Red Ponzi eventually barfs all over the world economy.

As we have frequently argued, the actual problem is much more the compositionof taxes in the U.S., not the absolute level. While lower taxes and smaller government are always preferable, the lesson of the last 35 years is that cutting nominal tax rates but not spending levels only results in an explosion of public debt. It also means, implicitly, that future and unborn taxpayers will bear the burden eventually.

In that context, we must insist once again that what is hammering jobs and take home pay in Flyover America is high and rising payroll taxes, not the corporate income tax.The fact is, very few U.S. corporations pay the statutory 35% rate, and the ones which do are essentially domestic operations like retailers, restaurant chains, wholesale distribution and warehousing operations etc. that have no jobs to bring back home anyway.

In fact, the effectivecorporate tax rate in the U.S. is about 20%, not 35% and has been declining for decades.

In part 2, we will demonstrate why any corporate rate reduction that is actually legislated---and we continue to doubt any tax bill at all can be enacted---will have virtually no impact on jobs. Under current Fed policy and the financial engineering it induces in the corporate C-suites, virtually all the tax savings will be flushed back into the casino as stock buybacks, LBOs and increased dividend payouts.

Comments

Stop-Every-Fucking-Thing!Did everyone know that former NRA firearms instructor Stephen Willeford used one of those ugly, black, "assault rifles" (an AR15) to shoot and wound (twice) that pyschopath who shot all those people in a Sutherland Texas church?Has the Alinsky media told you that? You may resume your regularly scheduled programming ;-)

DS for senate. He is the only one who ever mentions the real-life tax burden for the vast majority of small businesses [and 1099 contractors (and other types of self-employed contractors)], i.e. twice-as-high and rising payroll tax. Let the Swampians try to counter all of those perilous numbers in the senate floor debate, pinpointing just how this tax cut helps the other 174,000,000 Americans.

No different than any other of the plethora of talking head media pundits

Stockman talks AROUND rather than ABOUT the only issue which matters in this debate - or would matter... if

there were any 'debate.' About how and why Merika continues to bleed it's remaining economic wealth and power into the loot bags of a tiny pirate empire in the s e Med... a vampire novella in the final chapters, with an ending as obvious as the failure of various 'silver crosses' which were supposed to rescue the victim from the peril of the talmudization of the west.

No mention of the political and 'religious' affiliations of the great majority of those who will benefit most from the charade of more 'cuts' into the body politic by morticians of amerika such as sTeVe MuNchkin & his SnAX pAk.

"Alt-media" sirens singing sweet songs of brics n beltlines, peace n prosperity, and new 'golden ages' weaved a web of somnolent complicity for the refugee odysseyian to swoon to, while back at home, the \MAGAggoTS/were busy chewing the foundations of the their homes and palaces.

Consumers pay corporate taxes I thought not shareholders. I'm talking real world not some accounting identity. The tax cuts don't go nearly far enough. If you wish to stimulate consumer demand supposedly 70% of GDP these cuts for the middle class don't make a dent in rising healthcare premiums. There IS a way out but you would need bi-partisanship over an extended period. More than 8 years because the cause took longer than that and so will the solution. It can't happen presently because DemonRATS want to bankrupt the country and take permanent control of the ashes. Open borders and welfare for everyone, the math will never work. But if they were serious there would be a way out.

Same old Krap article...I should go like this...America is bankrupt (Search on Kotlikoff Senate Testimony of Feb 25, 2015)They have no intention of reducing the revenue (taxes). The bill is Hocus Pocus to deceive the public into thinking they are doing something. If anything it is deception to set up the increase in taxes...

If anything maybe the Con game is becomming more apparent to the masses. If you ask most Americans though, I think they're probably still clueless. Living paycheck to paycheck, using some of that home equity to become further indebted. Fed taxes are insane in this no growth, low inflation, low interest rate economy.

Another example: The Real ID Drivers License your going to need to board a plane in the U.S. in 2018. Reg. D.L. will no longer be good. Not sure if that is nationwide or not but sure as hell is here in CA. The fuckers are taking more & more of our freedoms and bleeding us dry at the same time. It's going to create a bureaucratic nightmare and take tens of millions of revenue from already overstressed taxpayers.

interesting that no one other than Mark Levin talks about actually cutting spending instead of cutting taxes.............think of all the unconstitional things the federal government is currently doing...........the Constitution only confers 17 powers on the federal government but we now have 3,000 to 4,000 agencies and subagencies and programs..............no wonder gold got monkey hammered yesterday with $2 billion notional of selling: they don't want us to realize out thoroughly out of control it all is........

So what's Stockman going to do when the Dow breaks out to 30 - 40k and the dollar doubles??? Are we going to have to endure pages and pages and pages of his analytics to the point where our head collapses into our desk with drool coming out of our half opened mouth forming pools of saliva???Honestly this guy is like a wood pecker on a Quebracho trunk, always trying to penetrate but never does! Perhaps he needs to change his methods fer cryn' out loud!

I get the feeling that this GOP tax bill is just another step in a long process that was started years ago -- to slowly but surely squeeze the wealth out of the 90% and concentrate it into the top 10%. In a world with exponentially increasing population that is running low on natural resources, you can't let the "little people" have too much money, otherwise they'll consume. Bigger houses, bigger cars/truck, more vacations, more kids, in short more energy and resource consumption. That's a big problem because there isn't enough to spread the wealth around. The goal is most likely to keep this debt-fueled economy floating long enough to continue squeezing 90% of this country (and nearly 100% of the rest of the world) down to bare minimum energy and resource usage, with enough "basic income" after paying for essentials to buy a pack of smokes and see a movie, maybe. They're doing a slow boil on Americans and not a lot of people are smart enough to realize they're in the pot.